PHOTOS: Surfer Blood + Seaweed + Fidlar

When you think of Palm Beach, Florida, what comes to mind? Palm trees swaying gently in the balmy breeze? Scantily-clad bikini buxom babes rollerblading down an infinite slab of coral-colored concrete? How about anthemic, bombastic, life-affirming indie pop?

If the latter didn’t occur to you, let us introduce you to Surfer Blood: they call West Palm Beach home and, while still in their early 20s, have penned “Astro Coast”, an album’s worth of catchy, summery indie songs that even the most hook-laden power pop band would rightfully be jealous of.

Members JP (dubbed “The Mastermind” by the rest of the band), TJ and Thomas met one fateful night at an after party for Miami’s Ultra Festival, though they didn’t attend the festival itself (“We do not like the D’n’B,” they proclaim). After discussing music – what else? –for the remainder of the night, JP decided to recruit the other guys to perfect some songs he had been working on, and thus, the band was formed. Tyler and I had been playing with a few different people and nothing seemed to be working out. When Tom approached me at that party, he seemed dead serious about touring and trying to make the band work. I had seen how his previous bands had been; his old band had done a tour up to Atlanta over spring break when they were fifteen. It was exactly what Tyler and I needed. I gave him my phone number that night and he called me the next afternoon. He came by our rehearsal space and I showed him the recordings that would become “Astro Coast”. The fact that the other guys believed in the music from the very beginning was a huge catalyst”.

From then on, things moved at a breakneck pace. A mere two months after they met they started touring outside of Florida in July, up to New York in August and then to Chicago in September. On a recommendation from a friend, they started recording “Astro Coast” at a studio in Port St. Lucie Florida, but when they only finished the drums at the end of a two day session, Tyler and JP decided to take matters into their own hands, spending the next six months tracking and mixing the record in JP’s apartment in Boca Raton with a copy of Pro Tools which Tyler procured for “dirt cheap” through a community college where he was studying in Orlando. JP asserts, “It gave us the opportunity to give our album the time and thought it deserved”.